Attaining Hands-On Experience at Stryker Internship

July 26, 2017

Alexandria Drzazgowski, a senior majoring in Professional Writing with a minor in Spanish, is spending her summer interning for Stryker Corporation in the company’s Corporate Compliance Department. Based out of Kalamazoo, Michigan, Stryker is a medical technology company that focuses on creating new products and services for hospitals and their patients.

“A lot of the things our employees do can have a direct effect on the health and well-being of our end customers. Also, our interactions with our products (that are used to save people's lives), doctors, patients, and anything else are very closely regulated and monitored by the governments of the countries that we are in,” Drzazgowski said. “Because of this, Stryker has a code of conduct that is important for employees to follow, and the department I work in is responsible for making sure everyone in the company adheres to those rules so patients stay safe.”

During her internship, Drzazgowski has been working on a lot of different projects within the field of compliance.

“They've given me projects in every area so that I can learn as much about the field as possible,” she said. “So far, I've written policies to be passed out to the company worldwide, updated training documents that every employee must take, updated our global data privacy policy to incorporate the new laws that the EU (European Union) just released, and performed routine compliance audits on different divisions of the business along with a few other things.”

One of her favorite parts of her internship is how hands-on it is.

"Stryker sent me on two different weeklong business trips to assist in other departments. I was able to visit our MAKO division in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida (MAKO is a robot that assists with knee and hip replacement surgeries) and our orthopedics division in Mahwah, New Jersey,” Drzazgowski said. “In addition, the interns participated in Product Demo Day where I got to practice using our products.”

Drzazgowski has been asked to choose one of her projects from the summer, create a presentation on it, and present it to Stryker in a science-fair style environment on the last two days of her internship.

She found out about the Stryker internship at a Diversity Career Fair at MSU and interviewed with the company the next day. After going through two more rounds of interviews, she was offered the position.

“My classes as a Professional Writing major have taught me a lot of the skills that I am using in my internship every day,” Drzazgowski said. “Oftentimes, I will be asked to proofread policies before they are sent out to employees across the world, and WRA 370 helped with that skill. My major has also taught me how to write in various formats for different business functions, so that is a skill I have definitely been utilizing and honing a lot.”

Listen to the Liberal Arts Endeavor podcast to learn more about Alexandria's internship experiecnce.